We had a chance to talk to one of the guys from Sapphire who showed us their non-reference designed Sapphire HD 4850 card. We compared it to Sapphire's HD 4850 Toxic edition which has a non-reference cooling, but despite its color it is still based on ATI's reference design.

The own PCB design gives Sapphire a chance to make a much shorter card. As you can see from the picture below, the card is a lot shorter than the reference one due to the location of the VRM part. According to guys from Sapphire, a good heatsink on the VRM part is a must, as it tends to heat up a lot. Sapphire also told us that they are using high quality capacitors and parts for their own design, unlike some partners that they did not wish to name during our chat.

We also had a chance to take a look at Sapphire's empty PCB, or to be precise two of them. We are talking about a PCB that has no soldered parts so if you are wondering how it looks, you can check out the picture below,